The Official Salvage Vanguard Theater Blog

For the longest time I thought that “Gotta do the finger at this mess that we made” was a line from Kool & The Gang’s famous song “Too Hot.”

I thought it was a brilliant way for Kool & The Gang to say “Man, fuck this, it’s hot and we messed up because it’s so fucking hot” without saying the word “fuck.”

Looking at the lyrics today, however, I discover that the actual lyrics are:
‘It’s too hot (Too hot)/
Too hot, lady (Too hot)/
Gotta cool this anger/
What a mess we made/’

I was way off.

Nonetheless, my version of Kool & The Gang’s popular hit would have been fitting for this past Thursday’s performance of The Intergalactic Nemesis. The A/C broke at The Blue Theater (916 Springdale), causing the warehouse space to get over 100 degrees. (”We don’t know how hot because the thermostat doesn’t register past 100 degrees,” says Etta from across the way). Holy crap, that’s hot.

By the time the show opened, we got it down to a chilly 97 degrees. But damn, it sucked doing a show in that much heat. I’m impressed that the audience stayed throughout the entire thing. Although by the end of the show, they couldn’t really muster up the will to clap their hands together in an enthusiastic fashion because their hands had melted into a Johnny Tremain-esque nubs from prolonged exposure to the heat.

Sweat would drip into my eyes, which kind of sucks when you’re trying to read a page. I think I summarized some of the longer paragraphs because constant blinking did no good. Werzner took his jacket off after the show and his blue shirt looked black. Completely black in a liquid black sort of way. Same thing with Higgins. I’m not sure of Shannon’s sweat status or Buzz’s or Hilary’s, but I did notice that LB didn’t seem to shed a single droplet.

This frightens me and makes me believe that LB is made out of plastic. Or some sort of polymer that is resilient in the heat.